 I'll get this underway now. Thank you, everyone, for coming to the Science Media Center briefing on cari-dibac disease. I'm really lucky to be able to share some of the current research around cari-dibac ahead of the cari-dibac symposium, which is taking place in Hokianga this weekend. I'm fortunate enough to have three speakers from the symposium who will be sharing with us the outlook on cari-dibac. And also some of the latest research into genetic resistance and also treatments that can be used to hold back the disease. Just a slight amount of housekeeping. Lines for the attendees will be muted, but we can make them open at the end. And also, if you have any questions and answers during the presentation, you can put them in the Q&A box to the right of your screen. Our first speaker will be Ian Mitchell, who is from the cari-dibac program. He doesn't have his slides available at the moment, but he will be able to tell us a bit about the current situation with cari-dibac and the outlook. Our second speaker is Dr. Phillip Wilcox from the symposium, who will be talking about genetic resistance in cari-trees and the potential future possibilities for using that as a way to mitigate cari-dibac disease. Our final speaker will be Dr. Ian Horner from Plant and Food Research, who will be talking a bit about probable treatments for trees infected with cari-dibac and particularly phosphite as a potential agent in that endeavor. Without further ado, I'll hand over to Ian Mitchell from the cari-dibac program to speak a bit about the disease and the current situation. Kia ora everyone, Kia ora everybody. So apologies this morning I've had a few technical difficulties, but I'll get these slides through to John and hopefully they'll be available to you a bit later today. So anyway, just to give a brief overview of the cari-dibac disease and the cari-dibac program is my understanding of my role this morning. I'm a relationship manager for the cari-dibac program. The key part of my role is to ensure that all of the agencies and all of our communities are working collaboratively to protect the body. So cari-dibac disease was noted as an unwanted organism as a biosecurity threat in 2008 during some research from scientists earlier. But in 2008 it was notified in New Zealand as an unwanted organism. As a biosecurity-dibac disease, we have been calling it up to now Phytophthora taxon Agathis as a holding name, so it's a soil-borne organism. Phytophthora of the group of diseases called Phytophthora which are effected into forests all around the world. It's a microscopic and it infects 30 trees through the root system. Phytophthora itself is a fine-root infection. It's a fine-root infection that's taking place under the ground. We haven't even detected for years, so that's something we are still researching. How long is the lag between when a tree may be infected to when we may see some symptoms of the disease? After the tree was initially infected, it starts to form cankers or rotting areas on major roots. It climbs up the root system and reaches the base of the tree where we first start to see some visible symptoms. We will see bleeding of gum. The gum bleeding over time will, or at least the diseases it carries on infecting the tree over time starts to work its way around the base of the tree and it affects it ring-barks the tree and it basically rots out the cells that transport water and nutrients up the tree. As the disease advances, the tree tops start to be affected and so we start to see the symptoms up in the leaves where the foliage will start to yellow-brown thin out and ultimately you'll see dead branches and ultimately the tree will die. We saw probably, well at most as far as we know, almost every tree that's infected eventually dies, so we're very concerned all of us. What is the disease? At this stage it is in two major forests, which is Waipoa Forest and Waitakere Forest and then in a number of isolated areas throughout Northland, Auckland and, of note, Arawia Forest, Mangamuka, Ormuta Forest in Northland, Waipoa, Tronson I've mentioned, Glenburby Forest of Whangarei, Apku and the Russell Forest of Bay of Islands. There's an area in Kaewaka to Parkery Zone of North of Auckland, where it's particularly out west in the Waitakere area, Te Tirangere where there's a lot of private land and then more recently, just about the middle of last year, we founded in Whangapoa, northern end of the Coromandel Peninsula. What research do we need to do? We say that science is critical to inform our program and our key objectives revolve around knowing more about the biology of the organism. Where can we find the disease? So we're continuing to under surveillance across Cody lands to find the disease. We need to research how does PTA spread, what are the pathways or vectors of spread and what are the risks attached to spread those vectors and then how can we control PTA in terms of containing it and possibly control tools and what we'll be talking about that soon. All research funded by Cody Diabak Program must address those key objectives in terms of researchers in prototypes within those four key objectives and intelligence work stream of the Cody Diabak Program coordinates and contracts all of the research portfolio with input from the other work streams, our partner agencies and Tangata Whenua. We have a technical advisory group for external advice. We have external peer-review via providers and community. A research strategy is also Mātauranga Māori strategy. The objectives in our Mātauranga Māori strategy is that the place of Mātauranga is understood and applied and encouraging Cody Tree and Nga Hedi Health and investigating other uses for forests and Cody that are affected by PTA, predicting the presence of PTA, predicting resistance to PTA, managing and treating trees infected with PTA and forest PTA-free, remain PTA-free. Cody Diabak Program will fund or Cody will fund its highest priorities first. Of course, we have limited resources. Knowledge gets for future management of Cody Diabak. Very high priority is host range. What other species of New Zealand may it be infecting, if you like, and the risks attached to those pathways that's a high priority area of research. These resistance of PTA and does Cody possess a resilient gene pool? Phil will be talking a bit more about that. That's high priority for the program. Long-term ecosystem impacts, high priority health indicators, something that we're working on in conjunction with Mātauranga. It's medium to high priority, holistic health for Cody, Cody healing, also medium priority, and soil ecology, medium priority. Origin of the disease is low priority. Our response also includes an operations section of the program. Our priorities around our operations are working at the right scale, so not just on infected, small infected sites, but managing risk across the coastal region. Priorising work and targeting our interventions and operations public and private land. We've got some exciting stuff going on in the private land area. Critical design management and implementation of cleaning design is a cleaning station design. We continue to research our, you know, track up options for crisis surfaces to help create crisis surfaces and protect Cody roots at the same time. In the other major area of our response is engaging industry communities and individuals. To be aware and to be educated in the industry we're trying to in conjunction with industry create best practice guidance with the likes of the earthmen industry, forestry industry, restoring local people so that we have local solutions using local knowledge to help protect Cody and be made via capacity building in rural communities and ultimately the ways of messaging and education that you get about Cody Diabek will inspire you to take SHIN and be very hygienic before you reach the forest entrance. So that's my presentation and I'm not sure. Great. Thanks for that, Ian. I'll hand over now to Phillip Wilcox, senior scientist at Sion. I just made out that Phillip has a limited time with us so he might not be available for Q&A at the end but he will be contactable by email. Great. Very much. Do we have slides there, John? Were you going to load those? Yeah. So you should be seeing your slides now on the screen. Are they visible? No, not at this point. Here we go. Thanks very much. Yeah. And space will progress the slides before the arrow at the top. Thanks very much, folks, for your interest in talking about the prospects for genetic resistance in Cody and what it might mean. This is a shorter version of what I'm going to be talking about on Saturday and, as Ian said, it's high priority in the Cody Dibac program but we're only really just now getting into the research that is necessary to identify and utilize genetic resistance. Just a little bit about myself. I'm a part-time senior research fellow with the University of Otago as well as a senior science and the design of a doctorate from North Carolina State University in my PhD area was in disease resistance at Morris Tree. Currently, I lead a number of programs including genome sequencing of Radiata Pine and I'm also being involved in programs that are about utilizing genomic technologies for solving problems such as Cody Dibac disease and other issues associated with tree breeding. Other species, plus I also do work with University of Otago and human genetics, particularly with Maori and Pacifica populations regarding gout. And I also have a background of my whakapapa over eWee role in terms of providing technical advice to our eWee around things genomics and science in general who have a background in developing engagement protocols between Māori and Western scientists particularly regarding controversial technology. So key messages, I'll just step through the key messages that we'll be making on Saturday. The first is that we should expect to see heritable genetic resistance to Cody Dibac disease. One of the reasons why we expect to see that firstly, there is the observation repeatedly and now that there are asymptomatic trees found alongside disease trees and itself is not evident or sufficient evidence of resistance but it is consistent with extensive evidence of resistance to introduce pathogens across the world, other phytopthera species as well as a range of other fungal pathogens. My slides are not moving. Here we go. That resistance in the experience from other species in other parts of the world has been that resistance in the in the highest tends to be tends to range from quite rare to uncommon. What does that mean? It's either very rare or it's infrequent but not difficult to find. And that that just that resistance where it is detected is typically dispersed across the natural distribution in a manner that is unpredictable and I'll be presenting examples of that from Pacific Northwest in my talk on Saturday. Third key point is that genetic resistance to introduce pathogens has been extremely useful in forestry species around the world. I've listed a number of examples there. In Western Australia the phytopthera cinemomy infection and the phytopthera cinemomy infection in Western Australia has been extremely severe and managed forests around the world. There are many examples, for example Dr. Stromo resistant in radiative homegrown in New Zealand and phytopthera cinemomy resistant in Pinus Radiator in Western Australia. Cyprus cancat resistant in Macrocarpura and Lucetanica. And it's been very well known in documented examples from the U.S. Port Hawford Cedar resistance in phytopthera lytheralis and sugar and white pine resistance to white pine blister rust. Now both blister rust and lytheralis were introduced into the United States or appeared in the United States in the early 20th century and yet distribution of resistance is such that it could only have been existing before the pathogen actually arrived. So and I'll talk a bit more about that at my presentation. So what will a breeding program require? So assuming that we're successful first of all the development of effective screening systems and that's the work that we're focusing on at the moment is to define what the was to develop those screening systems so that the resistance can be reliably detected and then to collect and screen seed lengths from the entire distribution of Agafis Australia of Kodi. And that will require coordinated depth across Kodi land and doing so I think we will need a meaningful re-consultation regarding use of such genetic variation and particularly the application of technologies that could enhance the detection of natural resistance and its utilization. To have that conversation now ahead of time in anticipation of finding resistance I believe that there needs to be strong early participation at all stages. And those two points really respond to concerns raised in the Y2 sticks to treaty claim. This particular example I guess is particular to Kodi. And finally there's some science that needs to be done to speed the deployment of any resistance. Resistance, as I said before, may well be rare. So seed production and propagation methods will probably need some attention. We believe that a genome sequence of Kodi will be extremely useful as well as the associated genomic tools such as DNA markers to accelerate the detection and the deployment of resistance. And just trying to get the next slide up. So we're currently at, as I mentioned before, we're developing greenhouse screening methods and collaboration with the Bioprotection Corps and our very preliminary results which still need to be verified look promising. And then the opportunities if we find resistance. Well the first thing is that it's just another tool alongside the ones that Ian will talk about, Ian Horner, and other folks who are presenting on Saturday. It's essentially another tool in a suite of tools. And it also provides an opportunity and I think particularly for iwi for economic development from breeding and propagating resistant Kodi. And there's also an enhanced value proposition for managed Kodi forests. Now work that one of our scion colleagues will be presenting on Saturday will show that according to some financial analysis that there is a a worthwhile financial value proposition for managing Kodi as a plantation specie. But that is all entirely contingent on successful management of PTA and typically disease resistance deployment is a very cheap and cost effective means of doing that. But also another opportunity with breeding is to protect the iconic trees that we have remaining that are vulnerable. Essentially by planting resistant seedlings around those iconic trees to provide an additional barrier to the disease. So the bottom line is that I think there are good prospects for achieving genetic resistance in Kodi. We've started looking. We need some more conversations but at this stage we're cautiously optimistic about the prospects of genetic resistance. And so I have to attend another appointment now but there are my contact details and I'll be happy to take any questions by email. Thanks very much. Thank you Phillip. If you log out whenever you have to go that's fine. I'm going to hand over now to Dr Ian Horner from Plant and Food Research for him to share a bit about his latest work. Ian I'm just handing you control now and your slides should appear on the screen in a moment. Thank you very much for that John. I'll be waiting for that. Basically we need to try and find a officer. Can you hear me OK John? Go right ahead. I had a few problems before I was muted. There are areas where the carotidia is always already present. We do need to try and find a tool for treating the trees that are currently infected or under the threat of attack because at that moment we watched these trees die and we watched the aggression of the disease through these boroughs. We've got the slides up that can't be changed. Obviously in a while to load. All right. The phosphite tool has been used both in New Zealand and internationally and particularly in horticulture but it's also been used a bit in some native plant communities as well. Specifically for taking control of phytophthora diseases. It's got fairly large toxicity. It's biodegradable so it doesn't accumulate in the environment and it does seem to be quite specific to phytophthora and related diseases. So it's that's particularly quite a useful tool. Directly depresses the phytophthora growth that it also stimulates plants post-convences. So it's quite a useful tool in that sense. And it can be applied in a number of ways so that makes it potentially useful. So I guess our brief was to see where the phosphite was. The potential tool for treating coyote dieback. We started off with some in vitro experiments in the lab to see if there was any suppression from the phosphite and found that there was that the PTA was quite severely suppressed by addition to phosphite to an agar medium. We then moved on to seedling trials in the glass house. I'll talk a little bit about those when we moved into trials in the forest. Quickly in the forest in the seedling trials in the glass house a lot of two or three-year-old seedlings inoculated with PTA and then we applied various treatments to see where we could control the disease. At some of the results that we got the difference is particularly with phosphite injection. I'll simplify these graphs so that it's only showing the phosphite injection result compared to the untreated control. You look at the top right there the roots of these, substantially less roots of these than phosphite ejected trees. Same with the lesion spread these cankers, but other fields about seedling up the trunk totally suppressed than phosphite ejected trees compared to the untreated cellular trees, the viable which is the ultimate measure. Every tree that was untreated whereas most of the trees that we injected survived. But it was a very encouraging result and gave us the most confidence and interest into the forest trials. We chose four different forests for the trials in the Waitakere Ranges in Saraitia and Onmahuta in Northland. All of these forests were already quite convenient to collect about 160 trees all up to trial across both sites. Did those trees, some of them injected with a high rate of phosphite, some with a low rate some had just a single treatment and some had two treatments and we had untreated controls there as a comparison. And this is just using a standard agriphos, an agricultural phosphite that is used particularly in New Zealand treating avocado trees. Looking at the sorts of results we got Guts of this growth basically anything in red shows that there is activity. So this is for the four different sites look across the bottom you'll see if you have either two phosphites, one phosphite or untreated. And pretty much all of the injected trees are looking healthy and the the leaves have dried up. So instead of using cankers the leaves have dried up and the phosphatiles can't get a control of a lot of the leaves and they're active. Looking at the spread of these leaves on this page basically from the same trees the untreated controls at all four sites green bar here is substantially more growth of the leaves than in the injected trees. So one of the very interesting results showing that the phosphite is very healthy for cankers. The sort of thing we were seeing in treated trees where the bark around the leaves are healing the bark is peeling back a healthy bark beneath the origin sign. These similar sorts of healing and untreated trees but quite often there is still active cankers beneath the field bark so there's breathing out of the plant. And then the phosphite seems to be helping the the just summary enough for me to roll so far to say that phosphite is potentially very useful for treating and currently die back. But there are a lot of things that we still don't know and something that must be remembered it's a treatment, it's not a cure. The disease, the pathogen is still going to be present in the soil and could reinfect once the phosphite levels have dropped. So it's a temporary treatment that could give the tree some repair. But the tree's population really do need a lot more research before it's rolled out on mass. We don't know how many treatments are required, how long the benefit will last. We don't know where the trees will fully recover if they reach the advanced stage of the climb. And quite a number of other questions which is don't trade. How do we avoid the fight on toxicity problem? Something that I think phosphite might have a big potential for and that's for advanced treatment. Other than waiting for trees in serious decline. So if we're going to be spending more money early as soon as the tree thinks it's threatened because perhaps it's made with a showing sign that is possibly the best time to treat a tree to give it some protection from the Coliseum Divac. And it may potentially be a useful tool for trying to contain the spread within a sample of what's expected. But that's something we haven't really made with it all yet and I think in the next round of trials that is something that we need. So a lot to do but very encouraging so far. That's about all I've got to say. So you'll see the extended version on Saturday. Thanks. Thanks again for sharing with that and thanks to all our speakers for giving up their time to talk to us briefly about Cari Dibac. I'm just going to open it up to the floor for any of the people who have dialed in or who have logged in on the online system. If they have any questions for Ian Horner or Ian Mitchell following this presentation. For those who are logged in online there's a Q&A box to the right off the screen where they can type in a question and I'm happy to close on to either of the ends. Or if you're on the phone lines now they've been opened up and you can ask a question directly. Are there any questions? Or if you have one to kick things off for Ian Horner. Where does the phosphite come from? Exactly. That's a good question. Out of a bottle. It's just a commonly used, commonly manufactured agricultural chemical. It's a very simple molecule. Basically it's prosthesis H3PO3. It's extracted from phosphates and a couple of chemical conversions and it becomes the phosphite. That's a simple molecule, simple chemical, very common worldwide. Great. That's from Dylan Moran. He asks, the phosphite treatment being used, how much of a revelation is that in fighting Diabac? It's a revelation. I guess it's a revelation if it could give some real hope for at least treating disease to breathe and trying to say particularly important to breathe. I'm thinking of all the yards in the Waikake ranges where people have got a dozen of their backyard that are under threat. It's going to be a lot cheaper to inject a couple of dollars with a chemical into a tree than it is to try and salvage that tree or stop it from falling on your house. The potential value of it in containment might be very, very big. So in that sense, I guess it is a revelation. It's nothing new if not a new treatment in terms of treating phosphates but its application and cardiopulmonary patients, it really works. So can you just repeat that last sentence and I missed part of that on the line? I'm not quite sure which one but I'm basically trying to choose to and the treatment by topfer is not used but it is used to treating somebody Diabac if we can show that it works and it can be used safely. It's going to be a real revelation because there's a lot of potential. Another question I've got there for Ian Mitchell is part of the Diabac program is focused on community engagement. How important is that in the larger picture? Are you concerned about people feeling they're left out of the process or is there actually resistance to any of the treatment? Community engagement we see is vitally important to the program overall because we know little about the disease yet we're learning more every day of course. We're dealing with basically an unknown organism to science that we alone have been researching over the last three or four years because we have a cure and our control tools are still under research treating that message out to the community to be precautionary and that our response of the stages is really centered around that idea of being precautionary, undertaking the hygiene practices and trying to contain the disease and stop it from spreading. So engaging with communities is absolutely critical in terms of people being aware and be undertaking those hygiene practices between our scientists and our Matauranga people time to investigate more some options. There will always be some the idea of shooting up your potty tree with a chemical but overall that community engagement at all levels so that with industry level and working with community groups, community organizations and just rolling those people and having them involved. Another question we've got from Gage, a question for either speaker is about funding looking for these efforts to make Kauri die back. I understand there were no funding increases in 2012 to 2013 or 2013 to 2014 for the government. Is the issue being taken seriously by the central government? I can answer that briefly, yes. So there was a major boost in funding for the 2014 budget looking forward so the program has been recognized that it's moving into a long-term management phase a primary industry which leads the multi-agency Kauri die back program has been funded for 10 years with a slight increase in funding on the 2009 to 2014 level and Department of Conservation has had a major boost in their funding up to $20 million has been added to the conservation budget particularly $10 million that is targeted to track upgrade Anything to add? It's very encouraging to see the interest coming from the central government The majority of the funding has gone to the track upgrading which is very important. I'm not sure if there's been a big boost in the amount available for research. Alright, we've got another question here from Lois Williams Is there any sign of die back in Tane Maata or other iconic trees and how much would it cost per tree to treat with phosphates fight? Would it be consulting Tane Maata for preventative treatment for these trees? That's a good question maybe the first but Ian, I could tackle In terms of any sign on Tane Maata I'm not aware of any some of the die back on Tane Maata Good Ian? Sorry, carry on Ian In terms of treating iconic trees this is the conversation with the kind of people or any treatment and certainly a discussion in terms of prevention once we get the system sorted out and get a lot more confident on how we treat and what rates we treat and all those sorts of things we've already had discussions with various about the phosphates fight work and I think as we get to a stage where we've got more confidence in rolling out we'll be talking to many groups about preventative treatment where trees are under threat Great, thanks for that another question Ian Mitchell with what you're saying about potential opposition to using the chemical on public land have there been any approaches to local councils, DOC or the government about the potential to do that? So the the die back program is a multi-agency response so all of the agencies that are in the program that's Ministry for Primary Industries Biosecurity Department of Concession and the four regional councils of the Kerti Dieback Natural Range that Northland Auckland Council Waikato and Bay of Plenty are aware of this research and including our Tangatawhila Ropu are aware of the research and but on public land until this research is completed that's the first thing I think Ian Horner's research program is a four year program and the consultation process has been really critical and Ian Horner has been great engaging with communities and engaging with the various monofinal groups attached to those specific field trials.